Emergence Summit Offers New Ways of Thinking

Wednesday, October 15, 2025

It’s hard to believe that two months have passed since we gathered on the beautiful campus of Omega for the Emergence Summit! In a time when uncertainty defines so much of our world. From a climate in crisis and fragile supply chains to the erosion of human rights, ongoing struggles for immigrant and LGBTQ+ safety, and widening inequities in access to nutritious food, our gathering offered a rare space for renewal, creativity, and grounded hope. Across these intersecting crises, fear and fragmentation often dominate the public narrative, yet within our community, we chose to listen, imagine, and act differently. The challenges facing our food systems are complex and accelerating, and it has become clear that conventional approaches are not enough.

That is where biomimicry offers such promise. By seeing nature as our mentor, model, and measure, we begin to reimagine food systems transformation through the same intelligence that sustains life itself. This approach is both deeply innovative and refreshingly practical. It reminds us that solutions already exist all around us, waiting to be observed, honored, and adapted.

The day opened with an inspiring keynote from Gina LaMotte, whose wisdom and passion set the tone for transformational learning and connection. Gina invited us to draw on nature’s timeless wisdom every day as we work toward truly regenerative food systems. Together, we explored how this design lens can guide us to build food systems that are abundant, equitable, and resilient—rooted in reciprocity, interconnection, and care.

Let’s revisit the highlights and key takeaways from our memorable day together, reflecting on how we applied biomimicry in practice and how each session sparked new ideas, connections, and actions for a thriving food future.

ETHOS:

During our first session, the ethos maps visualized by summit participants reimagined food systems transformation as a living web of connection, where the values guiding change, such as equity, sustainability, reciprocity, and diversity, mirror nature’s own patterns of cooperation, adaptation, and abundance. By surfacing responsibility to people, place, and future generations, these collective maps invite us to see ourselves as co-creators within dynamic, interdependent communities rather than isolated actors. What’s innovative here is the explicit recognition that gratitude, healing, and regeneration are not separate;  honoring traditional wisdom, learning from feedback cycles, and reducing waste become everyday rituals that reconnect us with the land and with one another, propelling profound and enduring systems change.

Ethos Mapping Synthesis:

Guiding Values for Ethical Food Systems Transformation

  • Equity and Justice: Multiple maps emphasized equity, accessibility, well-being for all, and social justice as foundational values.

  • Sustainability/Regeneration: Across all diagrams, sustainability, regeneration, stewardship, and circularity (feedback loops, reducing waste, reusing resources) were central.

  • Diversity and Inclusion: Diversity, honoring difference, and uplifting marginalized communities are called out as necessary for resilience and creativity in food systems.

  • Interdependence and Mutualism: Connection, reciprocity, cooperation, and mutual support networks are mapped as vital features modeled after ecological systems.

  • Accountability and Transparency: Trust, transparency, open communication, and responsibility to community and stakeholders are recurring themes.

  • Respect for Knowledge: Honoring traditional wisdom, localized knowledge, and food/cultural education appeared repeatedly.

  • Adaptability and Resilience: Adaptive, cyclical, iterative approaches are frequently compared to natural ecosystems, suggesting the need to design for feedback, change, and resilience.

Who We Are Responsible To

  • Community Circles: The maps visualize layers of responsibility moving outward: from self and immediate community, to local/regional, to global and future generations.

  • Farmers and Food Workers: Direct responsibility for producers, farm workers, and processors is foregrounded as vital.

  • Land/Ecosystems: Ecological stewardship and responsibility to land, water, soil, and all living organisms are core, inspired by biomimicry's systems thinking.

  • Marginalized Communities: Special attention is given to those most marginalized or historically excluded in both the food supply chain and system transformation processes.

  • Future Generations: Intergenerational responsibility is clearly mapped, connecting food system choices today to their impacts on those yet to come.

  • Global Community: One map included global community ties and responsibility to historically impacted/global communities.

Embodying Gratitude in Food Systems Approach

  • Honoring and Uplifting Traditional Knowledge: Rituals of respect, visibility of indigenous/traditional foodways, acknowledging knowledge keepers, and centering ancestral practices appear as actions of gratitude.

  • Reducing Waste and Circular Practices: Implementing feedback loops, recycling, circular economy thinking, and resource sharing as expressions of stewardship and gratitude to the earth.

  • Sharing and Reciprocity: Practicing sharing, partnership, and mutual aid, rather than extractive or transactional relationships.

  • Accessibility and Inclusion: Making food and benefits accessible to all, particularly those marginalized, as a form of honoring the value and dignity of every participant in the system.

  • Intentionality and Reflection: Encouraging collective intention setting, transparent communication, and conscious reflection as ways to enact gratitude.

These visual maps present a holistic, values-driven vision for food systems transformation deeply grounded in biomimicry principles, emphasizing interconnectedness, equity, cyclical processes, co-evolution, and reverence for both people and the earth.

RECONNECT: 

In the Reconnect session, participants explored the biomimicry principle of reconnecting with nature as a key driver for food systems transformation. Through shared stories and reflective prompts, participants highlighted personal and collective experiences where a deeper connection to land, food, and community sparked feelings of belonging, responsibility, and inspiration. What emerged was a recognition that re-embedding ourselves within natural cycles, learning from ecosystems, honoring traditional knowledge, and fostering empathy through shared experiences can radically shift mindsets and behaviors. The group’s stories underscored that genuine transformation comes when people feel part of the broader ecological web, not separate from it, leading to more conscious, regenerative, and collaborative approaches to food systems change.

EMULATE:

In the Emulate session, participants immersed themselves in OMEGA’s gardens to observe natural systems and uncover how biomimicry’s Life Principles, like resource efficiency, cooperation, and adaptability, manifest in local ecosystems. Analyzing the diverse functions of plants and systems (such as nutrient cycling, mutual support, and resilience in gardens), they noted ecosystem services and brainstormed food systems improvements rooted in these patterns. Key insights included designing agricultural practices that mimic nature’s resource circularity, fostering diverse partnerships similar to those found in healthy ecosystems, and developing food distribution models inspired by mutual aid in natural networks. This session empowered participants to envision food systems that are not only resilient and sustainable, but also equitable and regenerative, by explicitly working with nature’s strategies rather than against them.

EMERGENCE: 

In the Emergence session, participants synthesized insights from ethos, reconnect, and emulate, directly responding to prompts on how these principles contribute to an emergent food system and how to scale and resource transformation. Sticky note reflections revealed that core elements—such as diverse social networks, continual learning, flexible and risk-tolerant relationships, and drawing from both wisdom and lived experience—are central to resilient food systems. Actions surfaced included building collective responsibility, cultivating foundational knowledge, disrupting silos, sharing resources, fostering inclusive stakeholder engagement, and uplifting Indigenous foods and practices. For funding and implementation, participants emphasized cross-sector collaboration, compensating contributions, leveraging networks, access to education, and shared resources, all grounded in authentic relationship-building and accountability. This synthesis points toward a community-powered, adaptive, and equity-focused path to scaling impact in food systems transformation.

EMERGENCE STICKY NOTE SYNTHESIS:

Synthesizing the sticky notes from the Emergence session reveals three central themes for moving from vision to action in food systems transformation:

  • Interconnected Social Structures: Sticky notes highlighted the importance of building diverse, risk-tolerant, and flexible relationships—embracing collaboration across sectors, leveraging skills and capacities, cultivating knowledge, and celebrating shared successes. Frequently mentioned was the need to disrupt silos, nurture social networks, and root solutions in both indigenous and foundational expertise

  • Collective Action and Inclusive Engagement: To scale impact, participants suggested concrete actions such as sharing resources, educating stakeholders, fostering localism, and ensuring gradual, non-punitive transitions. Notes emphasized the value of cultivating collective responsibility, genuine stakeholder inclusion, and a “human focus” that centers both equity and accountability in all efforts

  • Resourcing Transformation: Implementation ideas included paying contributors fairly, working across disciplinary boundaries, strengthening access to education, and building collaborative networks and shared resource pools. Sticky notes encouraged transparency in funding, measuring return on investment beyond profit—in social good, equity, and community wellness—and using relationships as a primary currency for change

Overall, the sticky note synthesis reflects strong collective alignment on cooperation, capacity-building, diversity, and building food systems rooted in authentic connection and shared purpose.

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As we wrapped up a truly inspiring day at the summit, participants were encouraged to commit individually and collectively to making biomimicry more than just a concept, but a daily design lens for food systems transformation. Our closing message captured this vision: “Every challenge is an invitation to ask: How would nature solve this?” By embracing nature as mentor, model, and measure, and by honoring the wisdom of our local ecosystems, we can redesign food systems to be abundant, equitable, and deeply interconnected.

To keep exploring this approach, visit Biomimicry for Social Innovation for more tools, resources, and inspiration on applying nature’s principles to social and systems change. We also invite you to reach out and explore how we can continue weaving this lens into our collective food systems work across the Hudson Valley.

If you couldn’t join us this time, stay tuned for future events and conversations. Let’s continue to ask nature together as we cultivate food systems that are restorative, innovative, and just.

In Solidairty,

Salem